Once Led Through Fear, a Small Manufacturer Reimagines Itself
In October of 2013, my father-in-law called to let me know that his company's CFO had left. He asked me to lead Onex, a family-owned, 50-year-old manufacturer of industrial furnace components, based in Erie, Pennsylvania.
It's hard enough to take charge of a business that is doing well, but this one was, to say the least, in disarray. The employees were not only not working together as a team; they were actually pitted against one another, while others had a "not my job" attitude. All the business units were siloed. The previous CFO led through fear. We were no longer the friendly "family" company we once had been where people loved to come to work.
So, there I was, trying to build trust in a team that had been betrayed by their former boss and did not know me, and with a business that was in severe financial distress.
“But I was motivated and determined to figure out a way to turn around the family business.”
— Ashleigh Walters // Board of Director at Onex, Inc., and Author of Leading with Grit and Grace
My road to business success was truly the road less traveled. You see—my education was in engineering, not in business management. Even though I had no idea what strategies the business books would have suggested for solving my dilemma of trying to turn around distressed business, my background came through in spades, because engineering taught me to solve a problem by knowing how to find a solution.
When I began my career, my father was quick to tell me that just because I had a degree in engineering, that did not mean I knew more than the personnel on the plant floor. He stressed that in order to put my degree to work and make the textbook learning practical, I had to ask the people on the frontlines doing the actual work their perspectives. These individuals very likely knew the solution to the problem I was working on but had never before been asked by management for their input. So, I set out to identify problems and create solutions.
A Change in Style
From the outset, we changed our leadership style from command and control to a coach approach. The coach approach begins with training your managers to understand how they can better connect with their people to find common ground, even when they do not share the same beliefs. Teach them how to ask clear and specific questions and provide feedback appropriately without raising the other person's defenses. Start them off by encouraging them to engage in peer coaching conversations to practice coaching in a safe setting. This will allow them to gain more confidence before coaching employees.
By encouraging more frequent conversations between employees, you can and will improve company-wide communication as people begin to know and trust each other and share ideas. The very act of becoming friendly will help the workforce unite and build a team spirit to give you a competitive advantage and retain your top talent.
A Lean Journey
Lean was a toolkit that helped us change our culture from "not my job" to one where everyone from the plant floor to the CEO was in charge of making things better every day. Our lean journey began when we mapped out our value stream. First, our production personnel created a comprehensive spaghetti diagram of their movements in the production process. (Boy, was that an eye-opener!) My production manager was averaging 20,000 steps a day.
While that might be the perfect number of steps for weight loss, it is a terrible waste of motion for productivity in business.
In the end, we reduced the non-value-added movement by relocating the entire operation to a more efficient building. The outcome? Reduced overhead costs and a more productive, efficient operation. And the production manager's steps were reduced to 5,000 per day.
So, how did we become lean? Through a number of ongoing strategies, some of which involved working with our region’s Manufacturing Extension Partner (MEP) NWIRC for training and collaborative programs, such as Lean Together and Kata. Here are some specifics…